Fashion is an undoubtedly strange and complex world. In recent years, with the fast production rhythms going even faster, the industry has actually proved of being even more incoherent than we ever thought. So, while in the past as a designer you had to prove you had knowledge and talent on your side, nowadays you must also look the part. In fact you know what? Ditch the knowledge and the talent and just look the part and it will even be better. This is the lesson that comes out of the first episode of "The Fashion Fund", a behind the scene series that follows the selection processes behind the 2014 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award. While going through applications, famous editors, retailers and designers reveal through their comments that looking good and being pretty/handsome helps a lot in the fashion industry in general and during the selection for a prestigious award.
In a way, we didn't even need such a confirmation when we think about some contemporary Russian designers who have won - thanks to their good looks, presence at other designers' fashion shows, photogenic skills best displayed on high profile blogs and occasional young and pretty millionaire clients - the approval of the fashion pack, even when (let's face it) their knowledge of fashion history and real design skills didn't come from in-depth studies and reckless experimentation, but was born while cruising expensive vintage boutiques in Paris, a skill that usually results in a lack of a coherently solid narrative and in romantic and costumy collections with a '50s flavour about them (think early Dior-meets-early Balenciaga and you get the idea). So it happens that, too often, designers who deserve a bit more attention or who know how to express certain concepts and feelings, never (or rarely) get mentioned. This is more or less Nina Donis' case.
Undoubtedly the best (and most underestimated) Russian designers out there, they are also Russia's best kept secret and it remains a mystery why their wearable yet conceptual collections are not sold in supposedly cool and avant-garde boutiques in Europe.
Explorers are the starting point of their A/W 2014-15 black and white collection and it's easy to see a certain White Fang-meets-Call of the Wild mood in some of the bulkiest jackets and coats or in the tops with appliqued strips of black and white fabric.
Balaclavas and dynamic uniform-like sweats and trousers point towards skiers, aviators and vintage sportswear from the '40s and the '50.
Yet, since the duo has never been just about fashion and loves its references to culture in general, there is more behind this collection.
The explorers in Nina Donis' A/W 2014-15 collection have indeed embarked on a vast adventure, a journey that goes from Ray Petri's Buffalo fashion house and Buffalo Boy series of fashion spreads on independent style magazines such as The Face and i-D, to Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joan Miro and Louise Bourgeois; from Debbie Harry's punk style to Joy Division's dark tracks and New Order's rock, pop, dance and electronic blend, the whole filtered through "Shaun the Sheep" (think about Ms. Shirley Hermiriome's fleece when you see the oversized fluffy designs by Nina Donis...), Cruella de Vil from The Hundred and One Dalmatians, and Frozone out of The Incredibles. You could easily describe this collection as a functional yet stylish one, non-fashion but with a hard attitude. And yet there is something else behind the collection, something that goes deeper: the dark tones and the almost regimental styles make you think about a series of dichotomies - oppression Vs rebellion, dystopia and utopia, imprisonment and freedom. In a nutshell, rather than being in the realm of Call of the Wild, here it's more Jack London's The Iron Heel meets The Star Rover.
To translate it all in less abstract terms - well - balaclavas make us think about active groups of dissidents rebelling against the establishment; the sleeves in some of the tops seem extremely long, almost referencing straitjackets (and in Jack London's The Star Rover the main character Darrell Standing, locked in San Quentin State Prison for murder, is tortured via a tight canvas jacket, but he escapes physical pain by entering a kind of trance state and travelling through past times and lives). Besides, the garments in the collection combine masculine and feminine codes in a global and genderless language, Ray Petri was a gay icon and his Buffalo boys were "rude boys" and rebels.
In a Russia that has embraced Western wealth, but still has tremendous limitations on liberty and struggles to understand and accept homosexuality, all these elements could be a statement against the establishment.
Maybe we are reading too much into this collection, or maybe the unsaid in these designs is actually more powerful than what is clearly stated or what appears on the moodboard.
The deeper and at times undisclosed meanings of a collection do indeed remind us that fashion is not just for the pretty and good looking ones posing for the camera, but it is for everybody; it is something with a message, and, even when you are not politically charging a collection, you can still hint through it at wider and more important issues in a clever way.
While Nina Donis' collection is available from this weekend at Kuznetsky Most 20 in Moscow, directors planning to adapt for the big screen The Iron Heel should maybe turn to Nina Donis for costumes. There's probably no other designer out there at the moment fighting against the establishment and tackling the modern dystopia we are living in such subtle ways.
Image credits for this post
Photographs by Natasha Ganelina
Layout by Natasha Ganelina and Dima Pantyushin
Model: Polina Oganicheva/Point Managment
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